


All The Time In The World

by T_5Seconds



Series: Worst Sunday Of My Life, But At Least I Met You [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Rare Pair, Time Loop, most of the characters aren't very important, very rare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/T_5Seconds/pseuds/T_5Seconds
Summary: Phil bleeds to death on the helicarrier.And wakes up a week ago.Over and over and over.(At least he's not alone.)
Relationships: Phil Coulson & Loki, Phil Coulson/Loki
Series: Worst Sunday Of My Life, But At Least I Met You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988737
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70





	All The Time In The World

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise! We're interrupting your regularly scheduled LOZ fics for some MCU! It's nice to spice things up sometimes.
> 
> Since this is a time loop fic, and things might get confusing, here's the Original Timeline:
> 
> Sunday-  
> Everyone goes to work.  
> Loki shows up.  
> Clint is taken.
> 
> Monday-  
> Avengers are called in.
> 
> Tuesday-  
> Avengers have successfully gotten together.
> 
> Wednesday-  
> Loki attacks and is captured.  
> "You brought the monster."
> 
> Thursday-  
> Loki escapes.  
> Coulson dies.
> 
> Friday-  
> Invasion of New York.
> 
> Saturday-  
> Loki is taken back to Asgard.

_It's okay, boss. They needed something to..._

Phil blinks awake. It's Sunday, according to his phone.

Strange. He could've sworn it was Thursday. He also could've sworn he'd just died. A dream, then.

He can't shake the feeling of unease.

Hours later, a Norse God is spit out of the portal, and even though he should be shocked, Phil isn't surprised.

A dream. Logically.

SHIELD agents are used to logic. They're also used to logic being thrown out the window.

Days later- Thursday, specifically- he grabs an experimental gun. They don't know what it does. (He knows what it does.)

He walks into the room, speaks briefly to Loki...

And twists hard on his heel, jerking to the side, as someone materializes behind him.

The scepter- the _real_ scepter- leaves a gash on his side. He inhales sharply.

But he survived.

He wastes no time, pulling back the trigger, and Loki is catapulted through the wall.

He lets Thor out of the cage.

The Avengers argue, and argue, and argue. He's hurt, but nobody truly cares.

They rally, still, at the threat to New York- but not enough. Not enough.

His wound stops him from dodging as effectively as usual, and he gets hit. Bad.

As he collapses to his knees, he can feel Loki's eyes on the back of his head.

\---

Phil blinks awake. It's Sunday.

No, it isn't. It was just Friday.

...a dream? No. This is a _nightmare._

He goes through the motions the same. If he dodges the scepter just right, maybe he'll survive the invasion.

He twists on his heel faster, dodging the blow entirely, and pulls the trigger-

And Loki blocks the shot.

"Is it me, Agent Coulson," he says, looking perfectly calm, "or have we done this already?"

"I was hoping the answer would be _no,_ but apparently I'm not that lucky."

There's a pause. No attack would matter right now. This is the worst stalemate in the history of stalemates.

Loki inclines his head, uses- magic?- to push the button and drop Thor, and vanishes.

Fury runs in, looking like he expects a graveyard, and finds Phil still staring at the spot Loki had stood.

The Avengers fail to get along. Or to coordinate their attack.

They all die, one by one.

Phil climbs Stark Tower, now ownerless, alone. Loki is standing by the bar.

"You know, the first time, it was Stark who came to see me."

"You're strangely conversational."

"How so?"

"Your moment of victory. All your enemies are dead, you've taken over the world, and you spend your time talking to me?"

"I haven't. Won, that is."

(You lack conviction.)

"No."

Phil looks out at the destroyed city, and turns to view Loki. He's not much better. At his side, the scepter gleams. Pristine, though not for much longer.

"No, I suppose you haven't."

Loki lets him look a few minutes more before skewering him.

He looks, Phil reflects, almost apologetic.

\---

Phil blinks awake.

"Let me guess," he sighs to nobody in particular, "It's Sunday."

It is, indeed, Sunday.

This time, Loki walks through the portal and is immediately blasted through a wall with an experimental weapon. SHIELD doesn't know what it does.

When he stumbles to his feet, miraculously conscious, he looks only at Phil.

"Impressive."

Things progress as normal, save for one thing- Loki makes no other comments. Not a word.

He goes to face Loki, only to find the God long gone, Thor still trapped in the cage.

Phil stands in an ownerless Stark Tower and considers Loki.

"This isn't really how I wanted my week to go."

"No," Loki agrees, "I'd imagine not."

They watch the skyline together. Loki doesn't attack, even as the hours drag on.

A nuke is launched into New York.

It's both the fastest and most painful death yet.

\---

Phil blinks awake and throws his alarm clock.

He hasn't even reached Saturday yet.

He doesn't want to go to work. So he doesn't.

He stays in his house and takes a week off, letting his phone ring into nothing.

On Friday, after a successful invasion of New York, Phil goes downstairs to find Loki on his couch.

"I hear you took over the world."

Loki's mouth briefly twitches into a small smile.

"No thanks to you."

"Don't you have responsibilities to get to?"

Loki nods, once, and stands to leave. Just before he gets out the door, he turns to Phil and grins.

"Same time next week?"

"I wouldn't count on it," Phil murmurs. He stays up all Saturday, watching the clock.

11:58

11:59

12:0-

\---

Phil blinks awake.

It's Sunday.

"I hate Sundays."

He goes to work this time, at least.

He grabs an experimental gun. Several experimental guns.

Loki steps through the portal, is hit six times in quick succession, and dies.

Fury is talking. Phil can't hear him through the ringing in his ears.

He turns. Drops the guns on the table. Drives home. Collapses on his bed.

On Thursday, Fury comes to visit.

"Why'd you kill him, Coulson?"

"It doesn't really matter."

Fury leaves.

Phil looks at the news. Nothing. It's an ordinary week.

It's the worst week of his life.

11:59

\---

Phil blinks awake. It's Sunday.

Some part of him had expected that to work. The other part isn't surprised.

He'll experience this Sunday many more times, it seems.

Loki steps through the portal, ignores Fury, and addresses Phil.

"That was rude."

"I'm getting tired of this. It's been _months._ I'd like to do something different for a change."

"And what did you do last time, while I was... indisposed?"

"Nothing."

"...Ah."

Loki tosses his scepter to the ground, grabs the Tesseract and Phil's arm, and teleports away.

"So tell me, Agent Coulson. What do you do for fun?"

They end up on the couch in Phil's house, watching the cooking channel. Nobody says anything, but when Loki starts to shiver, Phil puts a blanket around him.

It's a silent peace offering. Loki takes it.

About an hour later, Phil starts shivering himself. Loki leans over to drape the blanket over the both of them.

It feels appropriate. They're in this ridiculous situation together.

\---

Phil blinks awake. He doesn't bother checking the date. It's Sunday.

As always.

Loki walks through the portal, delivers his speech, and starts attacking.

Phil stands by.

See, during a particularly boring episode of _Diners, Drive-ins and Dives_ , they'd planned out their next loop.

Phil waits until the SHIELD base explodes to slip away.

He goes to a secluded bunker, uses a passcode he shouldn't know, and walks in to see Loki directing his unwilling assistants.

That, actually, was one of the first things they agreed on. Unless absolutely necessary, no mind-controlled servants.

"Sir," Clint calls, "I think SHIELD is here."

Loki turns. Phil waves.

"No, I don't think they are."

Despite not being himself, Clint manages to look betrayed.

"Could you put Agent Barton back to normal?"

"He'll attack me."

"You'll be fine."

Clint pauses, shakes his head, looks around and immediately attacks Loki.

Phil tranquilizes him.

Loki raises an eyebrow.

"So. When do we start?"

Fury is evidently not expecting to get kidnapped. Neither is anyone else, save, perhaps, for Natasha.

"So." Phil clasps his hands together. "How many of you have seen _Groundhog Day?_ "

"I haven't, actually," Loki buts in. He's sitting off to the side, unnoticed until now.

"You haven't? We'll have to watch it next time."

"What," Fury interrupts, "is going on here?"

"C’mon, Nick, keep up. ' _Groundhog Day._ Next time.' We're not being very subtle here."

As everyone digests that, Natasha asks something.

"How long has it been?"

"A few months."

Loki, apparently incapable of not having attention on himself, slides back into the conversation.

"I'm starting to really hate Sunday."

For some reason, that makes Phil laugh. It's really not that funny, but...

"Me too."

What would have been the Avengers aren't very helpful. They don't have a lot of experience with time loops.

\---

Phil blinks awake. It's Sunday.

They skip all the introductions and Loki just kidnaps him.

Well, if a kidnapper would take you to your own house.

"How old are you, anyway? In human years?"

Fury busts down Phil's door to "save him" and finds Phil and Loki deeply engrossed in calculus. Loki is adamant he's 32. Phil, the one who actually did the math, knows he's 31.

Fury stares and then slowly closes the door behind him.

\---

Phil blinks awake and starts preparing to fight aliens.

All goes mostly the same as the first- though Phil survives this time. Until the comms crack to life in New York, and Rogers asks:

"Anyone know why _Loki_ is helping?"

Loki runs past, covered in blue-black blood, and only acknowledges Phil.

"Loki. Nice of you to join us."

"You're welcome, Phil."

The Avengers share six confused glances and get back to fighting.

They win the battle. Loki closes the portal himself.

It's the first time everyone's eaten shwarma together.

Later, Phil visits him in his cell. Bound, not gagged.

"This was fun. We should do it again sometime."

Loki smiles.

"Sure, but only if you help me."

\---

Phil blinks awake and starts planning murder.

"Wait, Agent? What the fuck?"

"Sorry, Stark. This was part of the deal."

_Bang!_

Iron Man falls, his power source shot. Literally.

"Did Coulson just betray us?"

He taps into the comms.

"I did. Any of you feel like surrendering? I don't really want to shoot Captain Rogers."

There's exclamations of disbelief. Nobody surrenders.

Watching New York get destroyed is a very different feeling when it's your fault.

"This was interesting."

"Yes. Stopping the invasion was better, though."

"Glad we're on the same page."

"Not for moral reasons, of course. For the shwarma."

"Of course."

\---

Phil blinks awake.

Gets kidnapped.

"Hey, Loki. Can humans learn magic?"

Loki opens his mouth to respond. Pauses.

"I don't know."

"Wait, you don't know something?"

He's grinning. Loki hasn't said that before, and his whole holier-than-thou attitude had made it seem impossible.

Loki is looking away. It's probably a response to the teasing.

"Magic takes a lot of time to learn, especially if you want to survive the process." He sounds strangely flustered. "It's all a mental skill, though, so even if a human _ordinarily_ couldn't learn it..."

Thus, operation: learn magic is born.

\---

Phil blinks awake, Sunday after Sunday, and gets to work.

Phil's very first successful spell takes weeks.

After a couple tries, he can successfully summon a small flame over his palm on command. It's not useful as anything but light, but he's delighted- and so is Loki.

\---

While learning (read: failing to learn) teleportation, he decides to ask another question.

"Why do you want to take over the world?"

"I don't."

"Oh? You _lack conviction?_ "

Loki laughs. Phil's insides do something strange, and he thinks _oh._

"Yes, that, I suppose. But it's a bit more complicated than that."

...  
...  
...

"Hey, Loki?"

"Yes?"

"You've been through some shit."

"Thanks."

\---

Phil blinks awake and hurls his alarm across the room without lifting a finger.

Maybe this time loop isn't so bad.

The look on Fury's face when Loki tries to stab Phil and he throws the God across the room- with telekinesis, of course- is nearly worth the entire experience. It's certainly worth all the time he spent learning magic.

The Avengers- not that they did much Avenging- question him incessantly.

He's deliberately vague. It's fun.

\---

Phil blinks awake.

"Sundays," he sighs.

He goes to a nice coffee shop. The SHIELD base explodes in the distance, and ten minutes later Loki drops into the seat across from him.

"After all this," he asks mildly- it's a facade Loki sees right through. They know each other like the backs of their hands- "do you want to grab dinner sometime?"

"Like a date?"

He nods.

"I'd like that."

\---

Phil blinks awake.

If it was up to him, there would never be a Sunday ever again.

He presents this to Loki, who has a solution. 

Actually looking for the source of the loop takes ages.

They turn New York upside down, sometimes literally. The Avengers take offense to it.

Phil gets really good at single handedly defeating all of the Avengers at once.

While they look for whatever is causing time to loop, they discuss what they'll do for the last repeat of the week.

See, there's a bit of a problem. They need to defeat all of the Chitauri, get the Avengers together, prevent anyone from dying, and hopefully keep the time loop secret.

It's a tough puzzle to figure out. Luckily, they have infinite tries.

They find both.

The source of the loop, and the perfect plan.

Apparently, during Loki's very first attack- while Phil was dead- something had gotten into a fancy building called The Sanctum Sanctorum.

Whatever it was had cracked a green stone. The Time Stone.

"I can fix it," Loki assures.

"But?"

"The excess energy should cause one more loop. After that..."

"Ah."

Well.

Phil's done everything he could ever really want to do, this week. Everything he could ever even conceive of doing.

He'd betrayed SHIELD, hired Loki to be an agent, thrown Fury off his own helicarrier. He'd beaten all of the Avengers in hand-to-hand, he'd learned magic, he'd saved Captain America's life. He'd taken over the world and he'd saved it. He'd fallen in love.

Loki reaches out and begins sealing the stone.

Phil reaches out to hold his hand, and Loki glances back, green beginning to overtake his vision.

"Same time next week?"

"I hope not."

\---

Phil blinks awake. It's Sunday.

He goes to work.

Loki, an alien God he's never seen before, breaks in. He steals the Tesseract, but takes nothing else.

Despite bring a fancy Scepter, he does nothing with it.

Loki is captured by SHIELD. Nobody in the general public knows of him, but some Iridium has quietly gone missing.

Avengers gather together. They don't get along.

Loki has evidently prepared, because he uses some sort of magic and the helicarrier takes immense damage.

While the soon-to-be-team fixes it, Phil goes to confront Loki.

He brings an experimental gun.

Loki pierces his heart from behind.

Thor screams, but is quickly ejected.

"You lack conviction."

He fires the gun.

And  
Fades  
Away.

...

Or. Well. That's the official story.

After Loki is blasted through the wall, Phil heals himself, slips on some invisibility, and goes to New York.

He's on damage control- not a single civilian dies.

The Chitauri are losing even before they're nuked.

Loki is captured. While the Avengers eat shwarma together, Loki is left in SHIELD custody.

"Hey, Loki."

He glances up.

"Phil."

"You know, it's Saturday tomorrow. It's a popular day for dates."

"Is it?"

Thor goes to pick up his brother and finds the chains, empty and opened, on the floor.

Many miles away, a Norse God and an Agent of SHIELD are eating lunch together.

\---

Phil blinks awake.

It's Sunday.

For the briefest of moments, he thinks it's _Sunday._

When he goes to sit up, someone makes a noise of complaint.

Phil settles back down to sleep in, curling his arms back around Loki.

There's not much rush. They have all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think Phil just goes back to work. Fury walks into his office expecting nobody to be there and Phil's just doing paperwork at his desk


End file.
